Marla Maples Bio
Marla Ann Maples (born 27 October 1963) is an American actress, television personality, model, singer, and presenter. She first drew national attention in the early 1990s, and became widely known as the second wife of Donald Trump, with whom she has one daughter, Tiffany Trump. Across a career that began in 1981, Maples has worked in feature films, prime-time television, Broadway, beauty-pageant hosting, and wellness-focused public speaking.
Although best recognized for her high-profile marriage, Maples has built a varied résumé that includes Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive, the holiday comedy For Richer or Poorer, a stint on Broadway in The Will Rogers Follies, and a 2016 season on Dancing with the Stars. She has also released a New Age album, hosted a talk-radio program, and partnered with charitable organizations focused on women’s wellness and youth leadership.
Early Life and Background
Marla Ann Maples was born on 27 October 1963 in the small town of Cohutta, Georgia, in the United States. Her mother, Ann Locklear Maples, was a homemaker and model, and her father, Stanley Edward Maples, worked as a real estate developer, county commissioner, singer, and songwriter. She has one half-sister from her father’s previous marriage.
Maples grew up in the nearby community of Tunnel Hill, Georgia, where she attended Northwest Whitfield High School. She was active on campus, playing on the basketball team, serving as class secretary, and being crowned the 1980–1981 homecoming queen during her senior year. In 1981, she returned to the same high school a decade later to crown the new homecoming queen.
After graduating in 1981, Maples entered the University of Georgia to study, but left college before completing her degree. She soon turned her attention to beauty pageants, becoming the 1983 Miss Resaca Beach Poster Girl Contest winner, the 1984 runner-up to Miss Georgia USA, and the 1985 Miss Hawaiian Tropic winner.
Path to Acting
Maples’s pageant experience opened the door to modeling, and in 1990 she landed a national advertising campaign for No Excuses jeans. That same year she began pursuing acting in earnest, and her first credited film role came with Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive in 1986. The film work led to small television parts and a celebrity appearance at WWF WrestleMania VII in 1991, where she served as the special guest timekeeper for the main event between Hulk Hogan and Sgt. Slaughter.
In 1991, Maples made a guest appearance on the popular series Designing Women and joined the cast of the Tony Award–winning Broadway musical The Will Rogers Follies in August 1992, playing “Ziegfeld’s Favorite,” a role originally created by Cady Huffman. These high-visibility bookings helped her cross over from modeling and pageant work into mainstream film and television acting.
Marla Maples Career
Early Career (1981–1990)
Maples’s professional life began in 1981 with beauty pageants and modeling jobs that carried her from small-town Georgia into national advertising. Her 1985 Miss Hawaiian Tropic title and her 1990 No Excuses jeans campaign marked her earliest brushes with celebrity, and both helped fund her transition to screen work. Her screen debut arrived in 1986, when she appeared in Stephen King’s horror-comedy Maximum Overdrive.
During this period, she also developed a deeper interest in music and wellness, eventually recording material that would surface on her 2013 album. The 1986 film credit and the 1990 denim campaign together signaled that Maples was moving beyond pageant circuits and into a more durable entertainment career.
Breakthrough (1991–1999)
The 1990s were the defining decade of Maples’s acting career. In 1991 she appeared at WrestleMania VII and on Designing Women, and in 1992 she joined the Broadway company of The Will Rogers Follies. In 1994, she and then-husband Donald Trump cameoed on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in the episode “For Sale by Owner,” and she also appeared in the series Something Wilder.
Maples co-hosted the Miss Universe Pageant in 1996 and 1997 and the Miss USA Pageant in 1997, all owned at the time by Trump. On the film side, she appeared in the action thriller Executive Decision (1996) and starred alongside Kirstie Alley and Tim Allen in the comedy For Richer or Poorer (1997). She followed that with roles in Happiness (1998), Richie Rich’s Christmas Wish (1998), Black and White (1999), and Two of Hearts (1999). In 1993, she also designed a brief line of maternity clothes sold in major department stores.
Notable Works and Milestones
Maples’s most recognizable screen credits remain Maximum Overdrive, For Richer or Poorer, and the 1996 thriller Executive Decision. Her Broadway turn in The Will Rogers Follies and her co-hosting stints at Miss Universe and Miss USA broadened her reach beyond acting, and her marriage to Donald Trump, which produced daughter Tiffany, kept her in the public eye throughout the decade.
Marla Maples Award Nominations
Maples’s career has not been marked by traditional film or television award nominations, and no verified nominations were located in the available record. Her work has been recognized primarily through pageant titles and one independent music award, rather than mainstream acting honors.
Marla Maples Awards Won
Maples’s verified competitive honors center on her early pageant years, including the 1983 Miss Resaca Beach Poster Girl Contest, the 1985 Miss Hawaiian Tropic title, and a 1984 runner-up finish at Miss Georgia USA. In December 2012, she won a Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best New Age/Ambient song, for “House of Love,” from her 2013 album The Endless.
Marla Maples Family
Maples is the daughter of Stanley Edward Maples, a real estate developer, county commissioner, singer, and songwriter, and Ann Locklear Maples, a homemaker and model. Through her father’s previous marriage, she has a half-sister. With former spouse Donald Trump, Maples has one daughter, Tiffany Trump, who was born on 13 October 1993, two months before the couple’s December 1993 wedding.
Personal Life
Maples met Donald Trump in 1984, and their relationship became highly publicized over the following decade. The couple married on 20 December 1993 at the Plaza Hotel in New York and separated in May 1997, finalizing their divorce on 8 June 1999 under the terms of a prenuptial agreement. Maples has described the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting as a moment that prompted Trump to propose, and she has remained bound by a confidentiality agreement regarding the marriage.
Outside of her personal relationships, Maples is a long-time advocate of wellness, describing herself as a “mostly-vegan” who avoids dairy, eats organic, and is gluten-free. She is a member of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense, a speaker with the London Speakers Bureau, and a supporter of organizations such as Kids Creating Peace, AWARE NYC, and the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine. She also makes personalized video messages through the Cameo platform.